Management of Night‐Waking in Young Children

Abstract

Abstract Regular waking at night is one of the most common problems encountered by parents of young children. In a family counselling programme in Auckland, a night‐waking programme has been used with 208 children referred during a two year period. The programme involved organized bed‐time routines, procedures for settling the child and non‐reward of crying, calling out and getting out of bed. Programme introduction was followed by daily phone calls to parents in which appropriate parent behaviours were prompted and reinforced. Further face to face sessions were held after one week and then if needed. Parent reports show high rates of parent implementation of procedures and rapid change of child sleep behaviour with improvements being maintained at follow up. In a survey of 48 of the parents, positive changes in the daytime behaviour of children were reported as coinciding with improved sleep habits. Also there was an absence of negative side effects, and generally, parent satisfaction with the programme was high.